


True Blue

by lalunaticscribe



Series: Seagull [2]
Category: Yuri!!! on Ice (Anime)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Magical Realism, Art, Based on Christopher Moore's Sacré Bleu, Lots of Handwaving, M/M, Painting, Theft
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-08-31
Updated: 2017-08-31
Packaged: 2018-12-21 07:55:14
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,887
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11939697
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/lalunaticscribe/pseuds/lalunaticscribe
Summary: Art supplier turned fugitive Viktor Nikiforov begins a spree of art thefts centred around the Life and Love series of paintings made notorious by the disappearance of their painter Yuuri Katsuki soon after completion.ICPO agents Yuri Plisetsky and Otabek Altin are the ones assigned to stop Nikiforov, and investigate the reason why a jet-setting socialite would suddenly turn to crime.Central to this case is an annoying insurance agent, several art owners who seem too cheerful to have their paintings stolen, and a mystery about the colour blue.Updated: Art by InkHallucination inserted.





	True Blue

**Author's Note:**

  * For [InkHallucination](https://archiveofourown.org/users/InkHallucination/gifts).



Here is a story that opens thus:

This is a story about the colour blue. It may dodge and weave, hide and deceive, take you down paths of love and history and inspiration – always about blue.

Mystery is the foundation of the Blue. For centuries, the mineral pigment used for ultramarine was so worth its weight in gold, that it was considered the Virgin Mary’s robes the only thing fit to be coloured in such expense for the sake of piety. The Chinese and the Japanese mixed up their blues and greens – the debate over ‘grue’ continues.

The Greeks did not have a specific word for blue; the words ‘ _glaucous_ ’ and ‘ _kyanos_ ’ were, to them, adjectives for the shades of darkness. Russian has two words for the colour – the colour of the sky, and the colour of the deep blue sea… or a man, depending on who you asked.

So, you see, blue is a colour of mystery, possibility, inspiration. Perhaps, even magic itself.

* * *

# January 1924

## New York City

_Sergei Rachmaninov paid almost no heed to the representative from the Victor Company. In this city, one executive was about the same as another fop with dreams of making it rich in the Wall Street Exchange – dandified and romantic. This applied even to Russians who had escaped the godless Communists._

_However, the silver-haired young man had ceased to make his attentions known to Sergei's companion. In fact, Sergei mused, it seemed like the Nikiforov boy was enamoured with the beautiful man whom Sergei had paid passage to America for, and in return had received a fickle gift which led to now: the decision to immortalise his voice forever._

_"The ephemeral may now become eternal," Sergei's companion - "call me Yuri." "Yuri? It's Russian." - had said. But the dark-eyed man was not here. Sergei felt rather ashamed to admit it, but it looked like the Nikiforov boy was going to steal his fount of inspiration from the world._

_To steal the blue._

_There is a promise, thought Sergei Rachmaninov. A promise in this new talking machine. The Blue had directed it as such, and here was a romance to following this... this dark-eyed spectre._

_Sergei signed the contract with that in mind. In the years after his body had returned to dust and ashes, to be remembered and heard in the new medium where the ephemeral was made eternal._

* * *

#  **Le 22e** **décembre, **2016****

## Onboard the (train) from Paris (Gare de Lyon) to Nice (Gare de Nice Ville)

 

“Case 1612251129, the Ded Moroz thefts,” Otabek recited as a train pulled out of the Paris Gare de Lyon. “Beginning on the seventh of January, a thief called Ded Moroz sent his calling-card in, always stipulating his target as the nine icons of the _On Ice_ series by missing artist Yuuri Katsuki. The series allegedly feature an abstract figure in dark blue, skating on ice composed in light blues, each lauded as ‘an exploration of darkness and ice’, to quote the _Times_. The thefts so far include-”

Otabek was interrupted by a soft snort. “29 November, Giacometti's _Lutz_. 5 December, _Rittberger_ from Lee Seung-gil. 10 December was _Flip_ , owned by Yakov Feltsman. _Salchow,_ stolen from the house of Nikolai Plisetsky on the 15th, and then _Loop_ from Thailand’s Imperial World Skating Rink two days ago. That’s five thefts _,_ interspaced every five days.”

“You have a plan?” Otabek mumbled.

“That pig of an artist made nine works in that series, all of them involving ultramarine oils on canvas,” Yuri held up nine fingers – all of them sans left pinkie.

“Five are stolen.” His whole right hand left. “That leaves us with four targets - _Axel_ , which is owned by Alain and Natalie Leroy, plus _Upright_ , _Haines_ and _Colledge_. From the fact that our Ded Moroz seems to be catching them all, the thief or thieves should be them, or the person who owns the last three known paintings.”

“This case’s main suspect,” Otabek clarified. “Viktor Nikiforov. Or he would be, if he had not been geo-tagged on Instagram across the globe during the theft of _Salchow_ and _Loop_.”

“By the same account each time?" Yuri softly murmured. “Not likely, Otabek! Then why didn't we see him in Paris a month ago?"

* * *

# Le 29e novembre, 2016

## Musée de l’érotisme (72 Boulevard de Clichy), Paris, France

“See,” Yuri Plisetsky, newest Interpol liaison officer fresh from Moscow, said aloud sans delicacy before the exhibit curator. “It’s a closing-down sale, but did you have to put the _target_ next to... _that_?”

Said target in question, a cyan and ultramarine icon of oils on canvas, seemed to droop from the walls. Since it was standing next to a semi-nude of said exhibit curator which stretched from floor to ceiling, the tiny icon was dwarfed by its predecessor. It seemed inconceivable that both were painted by the same artist; yet, the fact remained that the tiny icon _Lutz_ currently out-valued _Intoxicated_ in the list of Yuuri Katsuki masterpieces by about a million Euro. A disappeared artist was always a more compelling tale compared to drunken revelry and misplaced tabs.

Both masterpieces, though, were only a pair amidst the collection boasted in this auction. Caused by public temperance towards the more risqué of its pieces and a resulting lack of attendance, the Paris Museum of Eroticism would face its closing-down auction right here, and its owner Christophe Giacometti was fencing two of the ill-fated Yuuri Katsuki's works for public auction – the first time in public memory that the oeuvre wasn't already reserved and/or made unavailable by an unmentionable fortune.

Christophe - ‘call me Chris’ - Giacometti had somehow missed the threat delivered to his doorstep one evening in favour of exhibiting the Katsuki paintings.

“Bonjour~" A flute of champagne in hand, Gucci sunglasses hanging from one ear, Chris’ smirk only held the thinnest veneer of warmth as he started: “No, no, you see, what this Ded Moroz wants to do is freeze out the auction!”

Otabek grunted, his eyes still scanning the auction site. The Kazakh authorities had minimal interest in pursuing outside of their jurisdiction, especially in the matter of erotic art. Otabek was here mainly as a favour to Yuri to provide muscle.

A man in a suit walked up to Chris. “I heard that, Giacometti! Great pun!”

“ _Merci_ , Jean-Jacques,” Chris gushed back, although with much more rectitude. “Alain does not seem to agree, though. Ah, may I introduce Otabek Altin and Yuri Plisetsky? Boys, this is Jean-Jacques Leroy from King Insurance.”

“Ah, Papa’s always been uptight about policies on art. Call me JJ, Yuri,” he winked, before doing some, to Yuri, voodoo pose involving finger-guns. “The King protects all subjects! It’s insurance! It’s... _JJ-style_!”

“Geh...” Yuri gagged, more or less in time to spot silver hair and a suit in mauve. “Ah, _blyad_. Otabek, stop-!”

A crack echoed as the silver-haired man walked past the icon. Without turning back, Viktor Nikiforov advanced out, opposite to the flow of viewers staring in wonder as the most expensive icon in the world shattered in a cascade of glass to reveal a spiral of fractal – the forgery broken to reveal the theft of _Lutz_.

* * *

# St Petersburg, 25 October 1893 (Gregorian calendar)

## Deathbed of Pyotr Ilyasvich Tchaikovsky (AKA Chaika)

 

“ _A muse," a composer named Pyotr coughs with his last breath. “Is born to amuse. You would be the first with the courage to change that."_

“ _Really?" said his companion. "No more blue for you, Petya, even if you had a sweet mouth."_

“ _You should call yourself that. Courage. From that island home you came from."_

_"Well... I suppose," A supple spine bent before it snapped straight at the deathbed of Russia's greatest composer. Now. The painting."_

_Pyotr laughed._

_"The painting, Russian man. Kuniyoshi's painting."_

“ _I burned it. I don't want the blue." Watching the expression of his companion on his deathbed was much like feeling the cannons in his least artistic work tear his heart to pieces._

 _"Wait, what?" exclaimed the companion – the man with the power to take on any shape, yet often stayed with the dark-haired squinting visage most common on an island across the Korean Strait who was a sight in Petrograd. “Wait, no,_ _Chaika_ _! Where am I supposed to get more blue?!"_

* * *

# Le 23e décembre, 2016

## Nikiforov vacation house, Nice, France

 

To be noted though, the two law enforcement officers were very quick to concede that a man of Nikiforov's wealth had little need to steal tiny icons which, at best, would have been picket change to him. This attestation came from the size of his chalet by the Mediterranean Sea – wide, big and as excessive as the man who was bounding in the warm waves of the sea behind a water-logged poodle. Silver hair shimmered in gold under the winter sun, the man with the argent hair bathing in the complete disregard for the French seaside winter as only one born in a Russian winter could. Rising from the foamy waters dripping under the bright sun, for that one moment a figure of masculine beauty was there.

He sneezed. It was a quick move, but now Aphrodite had ceased her spell and the only thing to seize the heart was the spell of the Russian fairy – at least, until he opened his mouth.

So much for being Russian, was Otabek's thought.

“Oh, hello," Viktor Nikiforov greeted with a carefree smile. "Are you the new neighbours? We get all sorts around here, don't worry."

"I don't think you're qualified to say that since this isn't your permanent residence," Yuri snapped back. "Mr Nikiforov, yes? We're with Interpol. Well, I am. Mr Altin is with the *Kazakh police*."

A _boof_ drew Viktor's eye away from the pair, only to devote most of his attention to the sopping wet poodle on his veranda. “Oh, that's funny. Coming all the way to France for them. Can I help you?"

“We're here about _Upright_ , _Haines_ and _Colledge_ ," Otabek demurred. "Another piece from their series, _Lutz_ , was just stolen. Our understanding is that Mr Giacometti was its owner right before its prospective sale yesterday?"

“ _Lutz_... ah, you're talking about Yuuri's work." Nikiforov seemed to draw out the long vowel by instinct, a sucking of a sound that was more a prayer than a mere noun. "Have you found my little star? Love of my life-"

"Mr Nikiforov, please try to keep your description to a minimum of flourishes. Our superiors still have to read the report."

"No art, nowadays," Victor sniffed with the supreme disgust a diva may summon.

"These days?" Yuri scoffed. "How _old_ are you?"

Nikiforov smirked back.

* * *

#  **Le 23e** **décembre**

##  **Montréal**

_Axel_ took pride of place in the Alain and Natalie Leroy Art Gallery. Being one of the final works of the missing Yuuri Katsuki, the abstract of black and multiple blues looked to Jean-Jacques Leroy, also called JJ by his clients, more like someone had done a Pollock and failed to consider other colours besides all the tints and shades of blue. However, it was still his father’s prized possession, and thus under the care of Leroy Insurance.

“It must be Nikiforov,” Alain Leroy was saying. “Definitely Nikiforov. We failed to reach an agreement about this painting, and now he’s got a thief to steal it for him!”

“It’s... not just our painting, Papa,” Jean-Jacques pointed out. “There’s also Giacometti and-”

“That only applies if we didn’t hold the insurance for all the others too!” Alain growled. “Taking possession of Yuuri Katsuki’s last painting has only made it worse for us!”

There were two deep breaths – one from JJ and the other from Alain. When the older man finally recovered, his voice was clipped:

“JJ, I’m putting you in charge of guarding _Axel_. We’ll put it up for exhibition at Boxing Day, so after these two days you’ll be free from this responsibility, since it’ll be in the hands of the museum staff. For these two days, you will eat, sleep and breathe the security of _Axel_.”

“Er, Papa, is there a need-”JJ coughed slightly. “I mean, technically Axel belongs to Mr Nikiforov-”

“Our company’s name depends in it, JJ!” Alain snapped back. “Or do you want the world to find out that Nikiforov bought a fake painting from us, and that the real _Axel_ is here?”

“Papa, that is not JJ style,” the Leroy son replied. “There is no reason to keep the real article.”

“You don’t understand, JJ,” Alain jabbed a finger to the painting. “Somehow, painting that made Katsuki younger by about ten years.”

“...of course,” JJ faintly replied. “Yes, Papa.”

“You don’t get it, do you?” Alain’s face fell. “You will soon, once the rest of them are here.”

* * *

#  **Le 15 août 1969**

##  **Woodstock Music & Art Fair, Bethel, New York**

 

“ _I don’t want to inspire any more art.”_

“ _You mean you’re not inspiring? Because you are, my love.”_

“ _Not what I mean, Viktor. I mean... I’m going to be a painter. This time, I will paint.”_

“ _Then what will you paint?”_

_"Do you think those who inspire should paint?”_

“ _Of course. But nobody would paint anything but the Communists.” A silver-haired, blue-eyed man brushed back his long mane of hair, careful not to hit himself with the leaf-shaped blade in his hand._

_Under normal circumstances, a man with long hair would have attracted looks; alas, in an era where Woodstock was under way, he merely passed as one in a sea of peoples. It was also only at Woodstock that the pair of them could finally, finally enter the trance needed to create the sacred blue._

“ _I’m serious, Viktor.” An ultramarine smear of powder was made with a long stick against Viktor’s chest. Further examination revealed that the stick had a nail bed – it was a finger, covered in blue, as was the rest of Viktor’s companion. He froze there as Viktor scraped the blade along the extended finger, and then scraped the blade against a glass jar and sighed. “How is it,” he complained, “that I keep inspiring the wrong people?”_

“ _I think Chaika would beg to disagree. And we did get more blue. Hold still, it’s the eyelids next.”_

_Viktor’s companion held still, even as he scowled. “Bloody traitor.”_

“ _I think I prefer it this way,” Viktor commented. “The music – all of the passion, the suffering, the intensity, the skill, all of that life guided by a seed of inspiration – taking its form on your skin as the sacred blue. So beautiful as to be divine in nature.”_

“ _Aigami.” The man – almost a boy, with his rounded face, except that he had lived far longer than any human ever did – said. “The characters are for ‘blue’ and ‘paper’, but they also form a homonym for ‘blue’ and ‘god’.”_

“ _Is that so?” Viktor’s hand carefully flicked the last bit of blue powder, the sacred blue, from the left eyelid. “If I recall, ‘Ai’ is also a Japanese homonym for ‘love’. My love, Yuuri.”_

_The newly named Yuuri sighed, turning onto his side to allow Viktor to scrap along a love handle. Yuuri shivered – it caused Viktor to pay more attention to the line of his spine. “It is also a homonym for ‘sorrow’, Viktor,” he whispered._

“ _That’s true. Always standing on the sidelines of history – my Yuuri deserves to be the muse of history.”_

“ _I think you mean amusement in a different sense, Viktor.” Another blue smear ended up on Viktor’s nose, smudged then by Yuuri’s cleaned finger. “Those who make history leave the mystery bared to the world.”_

_The corner of Viktor’s answering smile met in the tip of the finger. “Yuuri, if you want to leave your mark on the world, that’s fine. I will also enter the world’s stage again. Like we promised, I will not leave your side.”_

_There was a touch of silence, and then Viktor pulled apart Yuuri’s legs._

* * *

# Le **24e décembre** **2016**

##  **Alain & Natalie Leroy Art Gallery, Leroy Assurance, Montréal, Canada**

 

“So that’s the _Axel_ ,” Yuri pointed it out to Otabek. “Disgusting, isn’t it?”

Otabek looked at it. As far as paintings went, the icon was dwarfed by a lot more large paintings – mainly family portraits or blown-up JJ-style poses, the latter done by JJ Leroy himself. Yuuri Katsuki’s work, though, was the most expensive work within the collection, commanding a price unmatched by any other work here by far.

Supposedly, the work was an abstract figure in a forward-facing take-off – the named figure skating move, just like all the others in the same series. Within this particular series, though, viewers had supposedly hallucinated actual moving figures. Such was Katsuki’s talent...

“Isn’t he an idiot?” Yuri glared at the piece, pointing one leopard-gloved finger at it. “That Katsuki, to suddenly change from dance to painting. They’re totally different forms of art.”

“Perhaps he wanted to make his mark on the world, by his own hands.” Otabek contemplated. “I suppose having an art supplier as his lover only increased his access to superior-quality materials.

“Just like how Nikiforov supposedly bought Popovich’s services.”

“Popovich?” Otabek enquired. “The man behind Carabosse himself. Then, is his target technological, or has it always been the same?”

“Does it matter?” Yuri made a grand wave. His arm, in its eloquence, covered the entire gallery, the building, and all of its contents, including the little blue icon which was so dear. “He wants _this_ from Alain Leroy.”

“Nikiforov has taken enough from me.” Alain Leroy himself had arrived, flanked by his son and a bodyguard. “Mr Altin, Mr Plisetsky. I see you appreciate the last of Katsuki’s works under our care.”

“More or less,” Otabek demurred at the same time Yuri asked “ _Our_ care?”

“The payout is incredibly high,” Alain agreed. “Including this one. Our new fire installation system was made just for _Axel_.”

“Of course,” Yuri stroked the wall next to the icon, studying the ceilings. “Gas-based?”

“Naturally.” The elder Leroy nodded. “But, how is the progress on the case?”

“There is no evidence – at least, none admissible in court,” Otabek admitted. “Therefore the investigation is still ongoing.”

Leroy the younger gave him a look. Otabek returned the eloquent gaze with equanimity. There was a long bit of silence, and the calmness turned sour as the father and son decided to retreat.

“Why JJ?” Yuri complained quietly.

“It’s our job,” Otabek replied. “We’re the ones in blue. Can’t be helped.”

Yuri pursed his lips, still glaring at _Axel_. “Blue,” he murmured. “Blue...”

Otabek considered the painting. “It’s nice to look at,” he finally admitted.

The Russian fey creature next to him scowled. “A waste is what it is. Did you know the idiot wanted to supply real lapis lazuli for this? My Deda was talking about it for days.”

“Mr Nikolai?”

“Yep. Pigment artist.” Yuri scowled. “How _else_ do I know the pig?”

“What pig?”

“Never mind that, Otabek.” Yuri jerked his head to one side, tracing the icon again. As his gloved finger pressed onto varnished oils, it looked like smoke was following the tracing, light caught onto the dust and oils of the brilliant pigments within the blue.

“Shit! Beka!”

* * *

“This much for a fire suppression system?” Georgi Popovich typed the last command line on his netbook before he hit enter and pulled out the cables leading from his device to the building’s electronic security system. “And then you still set a pressure switch to burn them all. All that art,” he sighed, “a pity, a pity.”

From a balcony above the exhibit, Viktor only stared at the fire in the open-air gallery drawing attention from all attendees. The blue, already aflame, began to billow smoke. It coalesced into its source, collapsing into the curve of a thigh, the arch of an arm –

“What the hell is going on?!” JJ Leroy had already rushed back only as a dark-haired, dark-eyed man covered in azure blue stumbled into the glass panelling around the gallery. Streaks of mottled ultramarine stained the glass as he slumped.

Before the crowd of stunned and panicked onlookers, the missing artist Yuuri Katsuki raised a finger towards the stunned figure of Alain Leroy.

“ _You_ _..._ ”

Standing above Alain, Viktor’s eyes twinkled. 

* * *

#  **Le 25 décembre**

##  **Montréal**

Yuuri Katsuki’s hands twitched. “I shouldn’t have painted myself into the painting. That was ridiculous, what was I _thinking_ -”

Teacups rattled in the saucers with the force of Yuri setting them down beside the hospital cot. “Yeah, what were you thinking, pig? Getting chopped into nine pieces wasn’t enough? Playing catch-up with this puppy is one thing, but doing it with insurance investigators and Interpol is another. You’re lucky Beka was willing to cover on such short notice.”

“Never mind that,” Viktor’s silky reply belied the tenderness by which he kept cuddling Yuuri Katsuki, newly rediscovered and currently recuperating artist, on the bed. “How much does Leroy know?”

“Which one?”

“Either one,” he spat. “Alain Leroy started this mess by cutting up the original painting in the first place. All of the places the pieces in _On Ice_ were dealt to – those were his properties.”

Yuri’s shoulders slumped. They were currently in a hospital in Montreal. The plane tickets and passports were already prepared. There were spare identities and enough cash to get the Katsuki-Nikiforov pair anywhere in the world. “So he was after the Blue?”

“More like how to make the Blue, or he was really fixated on you, my love,” Viktor crooned. “Does it matter? Men like Alain Leroy are fixated on winning – and living. They never cared about what the Blue meant. Only that it existed, and it was worth cutting up your greatest masterpiece with you in it and scattering the pieces far and wide. So I made like Isis-”

“-and, this is where I _gag_ , old man,” Yuri cut in. “So, I can tell Deda that you’re fine, and Phichit, Yakov, Georgi, Mila and Giacometti already know, or they wouldn’t have pitched in to get the icons in position to be stolen. But what I can’t figure out is, what the fuck were you painting until you painted yourself into it?”

Yuuri looked down. Viktor hugged him tighter. If there was a poodle in sight, it would have squashed into the melange.

“Erm... _Yuuri on Ice_?” Yuuri hazarded at last. “It was a self-portrait at the rink.”

Beat.

“I was _bored_!” Yuuri defended before a teacup shattered on the far wall with Yuri’s smartphone.

“You damn pig! We were through all this for your giant self-portrait?!”

“I commissioned it!” Viktor screeched as another teacup broke.

None of them made mention of the man arrested under suspicion for the thefts and kidnapping of Yuuri Katsuki. None of them questioned the circumstances which had led to an artist painting his very self into a portrait, and the portrait divided and scattered across the world. Behind this sequence of events was always the friends who helped his silver-haired Colourman to locate an amusing person from Japan, having travelled across the world with a seagull and a romantic in two centuries of change and art.

None of this has been told directly to you. All of the truth, the little details, have been obscured in the Blue...

* * *

**And this is why I sojourn here,**  
**Alone and palely loitering,**  
**Though the sedge is withered from the lake,**  
**And no birds sing.**

**- John Keats, “La Belle Dame Sans Merci"**

* * *

**The 9 icons of _Yuuri on Ice_ :**

****

 


End file.
